Monthly Podcast

Here is our latest podcast from the preschool. 

Tips on How to be a Good Friend.

Making Popcorn

Before we left for Holiday break, we spent our last day in pajamas, watched a movie of Maurice Sendak Stories and Songs, and made popcorn for the movie.

Picking away at the kernels on the cob.

Joanna Jerose, our school's outdoor classroom coordinator, was able to score up some real popcorn on the cob for us. On Thursday, the day before we popped the corn, we spent a lot of time at the science table picking the kernels out of the cobs. 

A full row out

We noticed the kernels were very small. We noticed it was a lot of work to pick them out one by one. It worked to strengthen the fine motor muscles in our fingers.

This is 100 kernels.

As we picked kernels, we did some counting. We made a pile of 100. We couldn't believe how little the pile looked compared to all of the kernels we picked. So, we counted out 50 more. It still looked little. We did some quick estimating and decided that we definitely picked more than a thousand kernels--and maybe even 2000. 

On Friday, Movie Day, we made the popcorn in a popcorn popper. The kids delighted in the spectacle. Many of them reported that they don't ever see popcorn popping. (I blame microwave ovens.)

I talked to them about how inside each kernel, there is a teeny bit of water. When the kernels heat up in the oil, the water inside ends up reaching its boiling point. They knew when water boils it gets bubbly. I told them when the bubbling starts happening inside the kernel, that's what makes the kernel explode into popcorn. As they watched the kernels burst, I also drew their attention to the steam coming out of the top of the popper. That was the other result of the boiling water inside the kernels. Steam is hot water being lifted into the air because it turned its gas form. 

We also learned The Popcorn Chant (by Peter and Ellen Allard). The words are:

"You put the oil in the pot and you let it get hot.

You put the popcorn in and you start to grin.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle,  

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, POP!"

Podcasting

Follow the link below and you can hear how our preschool students would prepare a turkey to eat for Thanksgiving. This is our first attempt at developing a monthly podcast to share our learning in preschool this year. 

I will continue to explore the ins and outs of Podbean, the podcast hosting and sharing website that I learned about when I wen to the Vita Learn statewide technology conference in early November. 

It looks like I will be able to embed a podcast player to this blog. That will allow you to link to all of the new podcasts right from here. I just haven't quite figured it out.

If you are familiar with RSS feeds, you can sign up for the preschool monthly podcast at the ffvtpreschool Podbean page.

Have fun listening to these creative ways to prepare Turkey.

How To Prepare A Thanksgiving Turkey by the Fairfield Preschool Students

Holiday Concert songs

Here are two links to You Tube videos of the two songs we will be performing for the holiday concert. You can watch them with your child andnpractice the words over the Thanksgiving.

What I Am

One Was Johnny

The Many Colors of Us

This is another in my series: "I meant to blog about this awhile ago."

Back in September when we we learning about ourselves, friends and families, we read the book The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. The girl in the book is painting pictures of her friends. As she works, she realizes none of them have exactly the same skin colors. One friend is cinnamon, another is chocolate, and still another friend is peachy. 

So, at art the week we read the book, we made big faces by cutting out round shapes from big paper for our head. Before we painted the heads, we had a bunch of skin color shades of paint. The kids chose the color that was closest to their skin shade and we squirted it in a paper cup. 

Next, I painted the color right onto their hand. Then we asked if it was too dark or too light. They then chose other colors to mix with it. Every time we mixed a new color in, we tested on their hands. 

Once the color was right, they used it to paint the skin on their face. We also kept track of each color that went in and made a "math" problem adding the colors together that we needed to get each child. 

Four Winds: Erosion

As part of the Four Winds science program run by parent volunteers, we learned about Agents of Erosion. First, through a puppet show, we learned that wind, rain and running water are things that cause erosion. Then, we each got to try two experiments to notice the way agents of erosion act on rocks and soil. 

 For understanding water erosion, we started with two containers that had rocks and clear water. We shook only one of them as hard as we could for 10 seconds, mimicking how current acts.

When we were done shaking, we could see that the one that we left alone was clear and we could see through it. The one we shook was all mucked up with little tiny pieces of rock and dirt.


In the other experiment, there was a pile of flour in a baking pan that represented a hill of dirt on the ground. With a bottle filled with "rain" we squeezed little drops onto the pile. With each drop, some of the flour was moved and pushed around. The higher we held the bottle, the more dramatic the motion of the dirt.

Jack-O-Lanterns

Still working on catching up on the blog. These are the Jack-o-lanterns we carved together. This was the end of our Monsters theme. Before we made these creatures, we had a couple of days to explore with the open pumpkin. The kids got to play in the guts and seeds. Then, Melanie, out new classroom assistant, took the seeds home and colored them for us to make colorful seed pictures in art. 

In honor of Election Day coming up, I downloaded 8 patterns for pumpkin carving. The kids each got three votes. They used animal counters as their "voters," placing them on the three designs they liked the best. The winners, from left to right, were "Scared Ghost," "Death's Face," and "Cyclops." 

To carve the faces, we placed the the pattern on top of the pumpkin, used a poking tool to make little holes to get the pattern on the pumpkin. The kids then help carve out each piece with a safety carving tool. It was a lot of fun, using our civics for voting, are creativity and fine motor skills for carving.